On May 28, 1937, the “Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH“ (Company for the Preparation of the German Volkswagen Ltd.) was born. The name was changed to “Volkswagenwerk GmbH” in 1938, and the company built its main plant in what has since become Wolfsburg. However, the outbreak of war and the company’s integration into the arms industry prevented the mass production of the Volkswagen (“people’s car”). Instead, military vehicles and other armaments were produced using forced labor.

Background

Volkswagen is the founding and namesake member of the Volkswagen Group, a large international conglomerate of multiple car and truck brands, including Audi, SEAT, Porsche, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Scania, MAN, and Skoda. The Volkswagen Group’s global headquarters are located in Wolfsburg, Germany.

As an individual unit, Volkswagen is Europe’s largest motor vehicle manufacturer, with over 74,000 employees and more than 7,700 dealerships. For years, Volkswagen has maintained a European market share of over 20 percent.

In 2010, Volkswagen posted record sales of 6.29 million vehicles, capturing an 11.4% global market share. By 2008, Volkswagen had become the third-largest automaker in the world, and by 2016, it claimed the top spot as the largest manufacturer worldwide. In 2018, the company benefited from trade tariffs and new emission standards, achieving record deliveries of 10.8 million vehicles. The Volkswagen Group’s core markets remain Germany and China.

In 2019, Volkswagen invested $2.6 billion in Argo AI, a startup focused on developing self-driving vehicles that had been backed by Ford since 2017. After the startup failed to secure further investment from Amazon, Ford announced in October 2022 that Argo AI would be disbanded. Some employees were split between VW and Ford, and Argo’s technology was salvaged to be further developed in-house by both automakers.

Volkswagen Today

As its globalization advances, Volkswagen is emerging as one of the world’s most successful volume car manufacturers. Today, the company offers cutting-edge solutions for future-facing industries, with a heavy emphasis on e-mobility and digitalization.

Under its “Mobility for Generations” strategy, the automaker is aggressively expanding its all-electric ID. family, recently hitting the milestone of 1.5 million EV deliveries worldwide and rolling out new generation models like the ID. Polo and the refined ID.4 SUV. To secure its technological independence, VW has committed over €180 billion toward electrification, establishing its own battery company, PowerCo, to produce unified battery cells at new gigafactories. Concurrently, the brand is undergoing a massive digital overhaul to streamline its manufacturing with AI-driven operations while building scalable, unified software architectures to support over-the-air updates and autonomous driving features in the vehicles of tomorrow.

As TBS News, we look back at Volkswagen’s journey from a single, complex historical vision to a global powerhouse. It is clear that as the automotive world shifts toward a completely connected future, VW is well-positioned to continue driving the industry forward for generations to come.